Depopulation in Nigeria?

[alexpgp]

There can be no question about it. Based on the volume of e-mail I receive from people in Nigeria, I would expect there to be very, very few people there presently. And all the rest are multimillionaires who, for some strange reason, cannot touch their money.

Oh, the humanity!

Okay. I know. Time to take the tongue out of my cheek.

* * *I suspect we at the store have been on the receiving end of a new variant of the Nigeria scam. We got a fax last week from a computer company, ostensibly in west Africa somewhere, that was in urgent need of a company to help handle millions and millions of dollars worth of merchandise.

I threw the fax out.

And received a follow-up call, if you can believe it.

Ye gods.

Cheers...

Comments

[maslacak.livejournal.com]

hey come on now, I seriously thought that Dr. guy needed my help...

[brenk.livejournal.com]

We get them here too. Worse, my husband worked in Nigeria for 18 months, 20 years ago, and the last begging letter from somebody in his office (a large multi-national) found us 2 years ago.

Last year, a local winery also had one of these official-looking missives. Somebody in the village said 'oh, there's this mad Englishwoman up the road who translates', so I popped down there, told them what the letter said ("dispatch samples immediately with a view to large-scale commercialisation in Nigeria"), warned them about 'Nigerian scams' and dissuaded them from playing along.

The very idea of Swiss wine (good, but fairly expensive stuff because of harvesting/growing on mountain slopes without mechanisation, virtually no export market because we drink it all anyway) to Nigeria was franky hilarious. I came home with two bottles tucked under my arm for my trouble. Nothing like the barter system, eh?